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©PhilippeAgidandJean-ClaudeTarondeau2010 Foreword © Anthony Freud 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–24726–0 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Agid, Philippe. The management of opera: an international comparative study / Philippe Agid and Jean-Claude Tarondeau p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–24726–0 (alk. paper) 1. Opera—Production and direction. 2. Opera—Economic aspects. I. Tarondeau, Jean-Claude. II. Title. ML1700.A37 2010 792.502!3—dc22 2010027483 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Contents List of Tables vi List of Figures viii Foreword ix Acknowledgements xiv Introduction 1 1OperaHouses:OrderandDiversity 5 2Programming:RiskandCommitmentfortheFuture 44 3ArtisticandTechnicalProduction 69 4AudienceandDiffusion 106 5Architecture:ConstraintsorOpportunities? 130 6FundingOperaHouses 156 7Governance,OrganizationandManagement 181 8Tensions,ConflictsandRecentCrises 209 9Performance,StrategicOptionsandProspects 236 Appendix A: Sample and Variables 270 Appendix B: The Statistical Analysis of Opera Achievements 275 Glossary 279 Notes 282 Bibliography 289 Index 291 v 8 Tensions, Conflicts and Recent Crises Opera houses are no strangers to the tensions, conflicts and crises that affect or can affect any organization in any field of human activity, in any part of the world and at any period of history. If several general directors of American opera houses use the French term édifice complexe among themselves to qualify the institutions they manage, it is probably because tensions and difficulties of all kinds are their daily lot. Eight opera houses, including one foundation comprising three houses, have faced or are currently facing crises of varying scales and durations, with effects that may be short-lived or longer-lasting: the Opéra National de Paris, Covent Garden, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, La Scala in Milan, the Oper in Berlin foundation, Oper Leipzig, the San Francisco Opera Association and the New York City Opera. No opera house escapes professional and pay-related tensions with the people they employ under highly diverse arrangements. This chapter discusses the problems posed. 1. Eight recent crises The first few crises examined here originated in change that was desired or imposed but poorly managed; the rest arose from disagreements between managers at the same opera house; often, both elements are combined. Crises involving adjustment to desired or imposed change Opéra National de Paris, 1989–94 From 1989 to 1994, the Opéra National de Paris went through one of the toughest, most complex crises in its history. The causes of the crisis went 209 210 The Management of Opera deep; it originated in a combination of options and problems interacting with each other. A new theatre for the Opéra National de Paris was considered necessary from 1976. The erection of a new 2,703 seat opera house – Europe’s largest, not counting the arenas at Verona and Orange – was the culmination of a process that began in 1976 when the French government requested an in-depth audit of the Palais Garnier (Bloch-Lainé, 1977, p. 7). The reasoning breaks down into three stages. First, an official criticism of the Palais Garnier: “The Opera’s theatre can no longer be filled and be the talk of the town as it was when first designed, nor even as in the past few decades. In the Second Empire, in a small affluent sector of society, it was the done thing to have a box at an Italianate theatre. Garnier built a large stage with arelativelysmallauditorium,setinthemidstofvastfoyersintended for society life. The high society aspect of the performances was the dominant element for a long time. Also, the Republic used the Palace for official festivities which consecrated it in a way that is rather peculiar to France; the general public has never felt at home there as much as they do in Italy and Germany. The true lovers of singing and dance who attended the opera between official ceremonies were chiefly interested in the artists’ technical feats. And so the institution existed, with neither great glamour nor great tragedy ...” (Bloch-Lainé, 1977, p. 5) Then a hesitancy over the city of Paris’ operatic vocation: “Must Paris,” wondered the auditors, “have an opera like all capitals have a zoo, and only do what it takes to compare honourably with the operas in other great cities? Or do factors exist in France and elsewhere that can make the arts of opera and dance one of the principal components of national cultural activity?” (Bloch-Lainé, 1977, p. 7). Arecommendationtobuildanoperatheatreabletoseat3,000specta- tors comes as a conclusion: “Opera must come out of the Palais Garnier. Anaturallyexpensiveartform,atthePalaisGarnieroperafindsthe optimum conditions to combine minimum democratisation with max- imum expense, the lowest number of spectators with the greatest pomp in performances, the highest operating costs with the smallest percent- age of self-generated income despite charging the highest ticket prices” (Bloch-Lainé, 1977, p. 151). Tensions, Conflicts and Recent Crises 211 “The [Bloch Lainé] mission is convinced that the answer lies in con- struction in Paris, in the heart of the city if possible, of a large, modern 3,000-seat opera house. Only construction of a facility of this kind can respond to the expansion of opera, multiplying the number of spectators by four while considerably reducing ticket prices.” (Bloch-Lainé, 1977, conclusion) But what would be done with the Palais Garnier? Circumstances surrounding the start of the Opera Bastille project. The aim of creating the Opera Bastille was to bring into existence a “people’s” opera with large capacity and state-of-the-art stage and set facilities.1 The new building’s stage and auditorium had to be suitable for between 250 and 280 performances a year. Several of the technologies on the new stage, such as the motorized, computer-controlled set-moving trol- leys, had never been used anywhere else before. The fire curtains in the set assembly rooms below the main stage and the sprinkler systems also incorporated new technologies. The size of the stage area, with a 28-metre proscenium arch for the main stage, had far-reaching effects on production; the stage needed to be “occupied”, and stage directors faced challenges never encountered before: how should the enormous space of this new stage be filled? Its size generated production and per- formance costs that were partly proportional to the dimensions. In a comparison of the stages at the Vienna Staatsoper and the Opéra Bastille, Michel Bieisse, currently deputy technical director at the Opéra National de Paris, observes Paris’ technical disadvantage compared to Vienna. Under the cumulative effect of these technical difficulties, operations at the Opera Bastille took a long time to get off the ground, advancing gradually from 1989 to 1993. A learning period was necessary. Ambiguous coexistence of the two theatres, Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille, between 1989 and 1994. Ambiguity remained over the artistic pur- pose and specialization of the two theatres, as the Opéra National de Paris also runs a ballet company and offered at the time approximately 150 ballet performances on the Palais Garnier main stage. The Opéra Comique, also known as the Salle Favart, became independent and left the Opéra National de Paris umbrella body in 1989. The modular adjustable theatre planned at Bastille was not finished and probably never will be.2 The problem lay in the juxtaposition of the Palais Garnier and the Opera Bastille. Everything progressed as though the designers of the new theatre were convinced that all operas produced by the Opéra 212 The Management of Opera National de Paris in the future would be staged at the new Bastille opera house, as the Bloch-Lainé report had recommended. But some of the Opéra National de Paris traditional audience were very reluc- tant to abandon the traditionally magical venue of the Palais Garnier. In Febuary 1989, Pierre Bergé, chairman of the Opéra National de Paris organization, could not contain his exasperation: “The Palais Garnier? It should have been torn down like the New York Met, sold, leased to the Japanese, opened to visitors like the Théâtre Gabriel at Versailles. Since we couldn’t do that, we had to invent a national destiny for it ...”.3 Nat- urally, that national destiny was identified with the ballet company’s future.

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